[enter K-On Girls. They walk around and then they sit down underneath Nelson’s column][Yui bored and fazed looks up]Yui: Neh, neh. Azu-nyan who’s that?Azusa: That’s Admiral Nelson.Yui: Adumoraru nerusonu?Azusa: Yes, Yui-senpaiRitsu: Oh, oh. I know! Wasn’t this the guy that slapped George Washington’s ass!Azusa: NO! He was the leader of the British fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar! Oh, didn’t you study this in history class, senpai!Yui: Ehhehheh. Azusa: So does anyone know any English songs?Yui: Only one. Let’s see hereI vow to thee my country all earthly things above[An old man wearing a beret on his head and a badge on his shoulder looks up]Yui: Entire and whole and perfect; the service of my loveOld Man: The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,Yui: That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;[The Old man stands up. He walks towards the towering structure and continues to sing]Yui: The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,[Everyone in the square stops their activities and too begin singing. They walk toward the column and crowd around Yui. We pan to their faces and notice how different they seem. But all are united in one voice, for one song]The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.[Yui appears confused but continues singing]Yui: And there’s another country I heard of not long ago. Most dear to them that love her. Most great to them that know.We may not count her armies[The camera pans along the crowd at eye level view. A few are holding in the air small British flags are being held up. The camera pans back to the Old man. He seems to be deep in thought and there are tears in his eyes]Yui: We may not count her armies, we may not see her King[5 Schoolbuses stop outside the crowd. The children run out of the bus and join in the singing]Yui: Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;[The crowd begin singing even louder now]And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.Schoolkid 1: GOD BLESS BRITAIN! GOD BLESS THE QUEEN![Fireworks of red, white and blue explode over the column even though there is daylight. The crowd erupts in cheers and everyone waves small British flags. It is as if the fireworks have brought them together and reminded them of what it means to be British. The numberless flags being waved makes it seems like there is a sea of red, white and blue. Some are crying and hugging each other. Some are wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. All are yelling ‘God Bless Britain.’][The Keions look on, visibly confused]Azusa: Wow. This must be what they call ‘the British spirit.’

So after much delay, I will finally be watching the K-On Movie. Will it suck? There’s a high chance that it will. I always found the filler, original episodes to be the least funny. 4-panelled gag comics are easy to write but there’s not much to animate or turn into a meaty story. They are the manga equivalent of a 5 minute comedy clip uploaded onto youtube so I don’t have high hopes on turning K-On into a successful movie.

Am I watching it because I like K-On? Well fuck yes!

Am I looking forward to the music? Got all the songs on my phone so what do you think?

Do I know anything about London or England? Only that it got bombed in WW2, was once the capital of the largest Empire and was, is and always will be home to the Royal Family. I know enough about the joint to have a good expectation of where I would go if I ever visit London. Here’s a list of 10 places I hope they visit.

1. Buckingham Palace- Can’t leave England without visiting the Royal Family

2. Westminster Abbey- If I ever go to London, I’ll be visiting this place and paying a flower at the grave of Darwin and Newton. Has to be a fake flower though. Bloody allergies. I’m sure the K-On Girls have an interest in the history of great academics.

3. Millennium Wheel- Built in 2000, it has now become an iconic part of London. And what better way to absorb all the sites of London?

4. Nelson column- Once upon a time, a crazy little man named Napoleon had big ideas about sticking his boot into every European nation and spreading French wine everywhere. A certain Admiral Nelson thought otherwise about sharing French cheese with his favourite Sunday Roast. At the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson sent the French and their Spanish allies scuttling home or resting at the bottom of the sea. The British Fleet at the time was regarded as one of the best in the world. Probably the best ever in British history and that deserved some admirations. Maybe a scene like Yui looks up towards the column and starts singing ‘I vow to thee my country’ and then everyone joins in to sing it while waving British flags, wearing the Union Jack and then the camera pans to a old man with tears in his eyes.

Ahem. Sadly, Nelson died in battle and despite his final wishes; his wife and daughter died in poverty. Fucking bastards.

5. Thames Barrier: I think this is suppose to block the flood waters. I just want to see it in the movie because it was shown in Torchwood and Doctor Who

6. Gherkin Building: You may remember this building from the opening scene of Half-Blood Prince, where the Death Eaters were smoke apparating and causing a muck in downtown London. Possibly another place to take in the city. If they let tourists go to the top floor that is.

7. Imperial War Museum: Britain still has it’s glorious military past (from a purely military point of view) to admire and it’s jam packed in one place here.

8. RAF Museum: And one of their more recent glorious military fights was the Battle of Britain. Go here to pay respect for the Few and just get a feel for what it was like to be in the RAF during WWII and the Cold War

9. Twickenham Stoop: FOR THE SPORTS but not fucking soccer. Nope but the Second Greatest Sports in the World; Rugby League. There should be a match around December and there should be some at least one Aussie import playing. World needs to know more about this Great Sport

10. London Olympic Park: The Anime timeline sometimes implies that it’s set in the same year as we currently are. Very well. Keionbu should AT LEAST be able visit the construction sites.

And that’s it. The top 10 tourist destination according to yours truly. They should have visited these places, should they not?
Edit: At least they went up Millennium Wheel.

I still like Kids shows. Not unbearably kiddie shows but shows aimed at male boys with just enough action to keep me hooked. There was a point in everyone’s lives when they decided to put move pass those shows. But I have still not and most likely will not. And it’s always amusing to see what kind of toys they are trying to sell to kids today since you know most of these shows are more or less about ads for mercs. I’m damn proud that Bandai has managed to revive Beyblades. That was the shits when I was a kid and our school managed to keep it off the ban list. I’m not so proud of the Bakugan phenomenon which reminds me of Dungeon Dice Monsters. Only cause I’m disappointed it never took off like the Card Game did. So what are they trying to sell to kids today?

Monsuno

Started airing today on Channel Seven, Home of Home and Away and X Factor. At first I thought this was a Japanese anime but it turns out it was a Japanese-American collaboration. The toy itself was thought up by some guy who used to work at the American Toy company mattel.

The story is about these gigantic animals powered by crystal energy…and they fight one another. Awesome. Second best part of Animal Documentaries is watching two males go toe-to-toe with each other, usually over a female they want to mate with. Best part of animal documentaries would be the great stories. A cub is born into the world, goes on a long trek, loses his mother, barely survives an attack by the Predators but manages to stay with the herd and continue to the breeding ground. Sadly, we never get to see the Real Heroes; the Predators eat the poor, defenceless cub. Damn.

Back to Monsuno. What I got from the plot was that there’s this guy named Chase Suno and he finds out that his dad was the one who created these crystal monsters. He gets his own Crystal beast friend, and is now on and adventure to fight other animals. There’s also two organisations that are fighting over something. Alright, it’s a vague description but bear with me. I came back from work and found this show when 10 minutes of it was already over. Some evil organisation, who we know is obviously evil because we don’t see their faces and they are spying on the MC. And there is the Company with Benevolent Intentions whom Chase’s dad used to work for. And we know they aren’t very good either because they are being run by a woman…with ze German accent. Those damn Secret Nazi corporations should stay away from my work on giant monsters who live in a test tube!

Initially I thought this was a poor dub by Americans. Turns out it was aired first in America. So does this mean I water down or fire up with the dub bashing? Other then the Evil German, there’s also the Nerdy Friend. He sounds so fucking whiny. He reminds me of the dubbed Joe Kido. Lord, I wanted to punch Joe’s face in every time I saw him in Digimon. There’s a high chance that these voices could end up pissing me off. And one thing I noticed that still hasn’t changed from the kids’ shows I used to watch. They keep finding ways of getting swear words pass the censor. The main character Chase has a bad habit of saying ‘oh crag’ when he’s in a bad situation.

The Big Appeal: Animals with crystals stuck on them; bite into each other for our amusement. If you like Dialga’s design, you will like the Monsuno designs.

Can we sell toys?: I just don’t get the Toys. They look like crag. So there’s a cylinder which you have to spin and out pops the crystal beast. Admittedly that looks pretty cool but based on the commercial I watched, it seems to be a two player game. How do you win? Compare this with Beyblades. The point of the spinning top game was to smack your opponent out of the ring. Here, the toy seems as fun as pulling a string on a doll and listening to it sing. It might be amusing but it’ll get boring after hearing the same song every time.

The Show itself: Might watch it again only because it ended on a thriller.

KyoAni served up an interesting new show this season called Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai. Translated back to Australian, it means ‘She has child school delusions but I love her.’ For all practical purposes, it’s a romance between two people who uh, have wild imaginations. In other words, they still haven’t grown pass the phase of playing make-believe games.

At first glance, it’s obvious that they all share the same delusion of living in an Fantasy RPG world and to make it worse they are pretending to be ‘dark mages’. Talk about being unimaginative and edgy. Although my judgement is probably clouded because of my natural sympathies with the hard-working dwarves and Earth magic. I didn’t play many RPGs when I grew up, so I didn’t have delusions of being a Dark Magician’ but I had them nonetheless. I suppose that was part of growing up. But looking back, my delusions (called 8th Grade Syndrome) have lasted a bit longer than it should have.

Fireman at 5

Plausible Explanation: I watched too much Fireman Sam and it seem like an awesome job. Beating down doors, extinguishing flames and earning the respect of others.

Smurf at 8

Plausible Explanation: Smurfs was a pretty good cartoon. Gay as but ideal society where these Blue Midgets lived together in harmony. So you shrunk to the size of a potato but hey, the village they lived in was welcoming and homely. Sounds like a good trade. The only real threat was that ahem Wizard who came up with a hundred schemes to catch the Smurfs and eat them. But he was so incompetent, he should have lost his Wizard License. He was so bad at his job, he made Lockhart of Harry Potter look good.

Super-Cop at 10

Plausible Explanation: I’d imagine being leader of my own organisation of Super-Cops. We would have a lot of guns, cars with an unnecessary amount of weapons and all just to patrol the city. Weapon Fap and Ride Fap. But I guess, the main reason was because I didn’t have friends and I came up with an imaginary organisation of followers.

Wizard at 11

Plausible Explanation: Harry Potter. Every kid loved that. I wanted to go to Hogwarts and learn Magic. But dealing with Dark Wizards wasn’t part of my grand fantasy. I think that my dream was go to Hogwarts, graduate with top grades buy a Cool Magical Mansion (like the Malfoys) and a flying Ferrari (like the Weasleys, if Arthur became a banker). I was planning to hide it behind a Magical Maze but that’s about all I remember about the floor plan. Yes, there was a swimming pool and a Giant Wizard Chess Board inside.

Action Spy at 12

Plausible Explanation: The James Bond variety and specifically the Pierce Brosnan series of Bond. Cool cars, lots of guns, cool gadgets, actions, save the world, get the hot girl. JB was the male’s wet dream turned into a movie. So yes, Bond got strapped to a torture chair and almost gets killed a lot of times but that seems worth it when you could say at the end of the day- “I beat up bad people, killed a right-wing ‘journalist’, travelled to China and I stopped a war and I also got the babe” The only thing that sucked was that the cars go totalled. Oh man, seeing the BMWs and the Aston Martins get wasted was like that was like seeing a dingo taking away my baby.

Elven Archer at 12

Plausible Explanation: I watched Lord of the Rings. I liked Legolas (even though he was a Gary Stu) and thought he was fucking cool.

Actual Spy at 14

Plausible Explanation: I became obsessed with wordplay and puzzles after reading Deltora Quest. It was an Aussie Fantasy series that was generic as a story (there’s an evil overlord, he takes over the land, heroes must go on a quest to find X and defeat him) but was unique for it’s interactivity. The selling point wasn’t that the kids defeated monsters to win. No. They earned their plot items by using their wits to solve brainteasers. Almost every book had a cool code or puzzle for kids to solve. This obsession lasted me throughout most of High School. I started writing coded complaints about my teachers in my student diary. I ended up creating a lot of codes and scribbling a lot more illegible comments in my student diary.

Eventually this led to me becoming interested in Actual Spy Work. I started reading about books about hidden messages. Think of ciphers, codes and cryptography if you want to be technical. This led me to reading about the spies in WWII and the Cold War. Where the much celebrated spies saved or killed lives depending on who was their boss and what info they passed along.

Then I started writing coded messages in my student diaries and invented a few new one. It got to the point where I began fantasising about working as a spy. The kind of work that involved passing dangerous messages or false messages while having a smile on your face and knowing that if caught you can end up with a bullet in your head. It wasn’t exhausting work but there was always danger.

General at 15

Plausible Explanation: Played too much AOM instead of studying. I became a fan of ancient warfare and this eventually led to my interest in more modern warfare. Come to think back then, I remember being insistent that the best kinds of battles had to be in Ancient Times.

Basketball Player at 21

Plausible Explanation: I was following the Basketball during the Olympics. And I got asspained about Boomers losing and Opals getting knocked out by the Americans in the semis. I started imagining myself as a super player. One who would lead the Australians to that match with the Americans. I would shoot all the 3s and I would become the player who would take Australia to the Gold and championship.

If you haven’t heard I tell you what, there’s this show called Bakuman and fuck it makes me stoked as hell! It’s all about Two Great fucking Men writing manga, the manliest job in the world! I know because Akito told me that Manga is a Man’s Workplace. Wait a sec…WHAT HONEY! Wait, Aoki Ume is a girl? I thought Ume was code for Unlimited Man no Estrogen.’

Sorry about that, folks. Now while my wife was writing the dishes, I wrote this song when high on testoterone after watching this show. And maybe a bit more VB on the side. But yeah, sung to that awesome song Manga to Gensaku. Which is English I think for something like ‘Men have balls! We are better then women’ Hang on. “What is it this time? Wait, what? It doesn’t translate to ‘Men have balls! We are better then women!’ Damn it, stop making me look stupid woman!’